Disclosed herein are a method and apparatus for presentation of application printing notes for a printer driver.
Presently, printing devices, such as printers, copiers, and multi-function devices, provide users the ability to print from electronic devices, such as desktop or laptop computers, handheld computers, or other electronic devices, to printing devices connected to the electronic devices. The electronic devices may be stand alone devices, or may be connected to printers and other electronic devices over a network, such as in a business, campus, or personal computing environment, that includes one or more printing devices.
In order for a printing device to interface with and function with the electronic device to which it is connected, a printing device driver is typically installed on the electronic device. A printing device driver is software that controls the printing device from the electronic device. The printing device driver may include a user interface which is typically accessed by a user through an operating system or an application program, such as a word processing program, a spreadsheet program, or other types of programs, and viewed on a display.
Unfortunately, application programs, such as word processing programs, document viewing programs, spreadsheet programs, and other programs, have many issues that can occur when printing from them. For example, printing a document with a particular document viewing program causes a color shift. Also, the particular document viewing program does not synchronize its N-Up, or number of images on a media sheet, setting with the printer driver's setting.
Customers think these issues are due to the printer driver and/or printer and call the printer vendor's Customer Support center for help, even though the issue is with the application program. Every call to the Customer Support center costs the printer vendor and reduces a product's profitability. Also, application program printing issues cause customer dissatisfaction with a printer, even though the issues lie with the application programs.
Thus, there is a need for a method and apparatus for presentation of application printing notes for a printer driver to inform users of printing issues with application programs.